The Project Gutenberg eBook, London River, by H. M. Tomlinson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: London River

Author: H. M. Tomlinson

Release Date: February 25, 2005 [eBook #15167]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONDON RIVER***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

LONDON RIVER

by

H. M. TOMLINSON

Garden City, New York
Garden City Publishing Co., Inc
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

1921

TO MY MOTHER

AND TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

Contents

I THE FORESHORE
II A MIDNIGHT VOYAGE
III A SHIPPING PARISH
IV THE "HEART'S DESIRE"
V THE MASTER
VI THE SHIP-RUNNERS
VII NOT IN THE ALMANAC
VIII THE ILLUSION
IX IN A COFFEE-SHOP
X OFF-SHORE
XI AN OLD LLOYD'S REGISTER

I. The Foreshore

It begins on the north side of the City, at Poverty Corner. It begins
imperceptibly, and very likely is no more than what a native knows is
there. It does not look like a foreshore. It looks like another of
the byways of the capital. There is nothing to distinguish it from the
rest of Fenchurch Street. You will not find it in the Directory, for
its name is only a familiar bearing used by seamen among themselves.
If a wayfarer came upon it from the west, he might stop to light a pipe
(as well there as anywhere) and pass on, guessing nothing of what it is
and of its memories. And why should he? London is built of such old
shadows; and while we are here casting our own there is not much time
to turn and question what they fall upon. Yet if some unreasonable
doubt, a suspicion that he was being watched, made a stranger hesitate
at that corner, he might begin to feel that London there was as
different from Bayswater and Clapham as though deep water intervened.
In a sense deep water does; and not only the sea, but legends of ships
that have gone, and of the men who knew them, and traditions of a
service older than anything Whitehall knows, though still as lively as
enterprise itself, and as recent as the ships which moved on today's
high water.

In a frame outside one of its shops hangs a photograph of a sailing
ship. The portrait is so large and